


With Decision Enough

by Crowgirl



Series: On the Strength of the Evidence [4]
Category: Grantchester (TV)
Genre: Angst, Backstory, Consensual Infidelity, Internal Conflict, Internal Monologue, M/M, Non-Chronological, Pining, Pre-Slash, Walking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-19
Updated: 2016-07-19
Packaged: 2018-07-25 07:48:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7524442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crowgirl/pseuds/Crowgirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Geordie doesn't know how to explain; he's never had to before.</p>
            </blockquote>





	With Decision Enough

Geordie pauses as he closes the door behind him. Ruth’s back in her kitchen -- he can hear her singing again. Other than that, the evening is almost ridiculously quiet. The part of him that never stops being a policeman is passingly suspicious of this: this much quiet almost undoubtedly means he’s going to spend some large part of the week -- or the next week -- trying to work out what had been happening while it was so damned quiet.

But that’s for the future. And -- not that he should be counting on something like this, but he finds he does anyway -- Sidney’s good at piecing together the the _other_ side of whatever bloody obvious shambles Geordie’s got on his hands. Geordie doesn’t know if it’s just native talent, or if he listens to his housekeeper more than he claims, or if the parishioners really do unburden themselves to their vicar.

He’s still on the step. If he actually hopes to have this...conversation with Sidney this evening, he’s going to have to start walking in the direction of the vicarage. Sooner rather than later would probably be best or he’ll be here when Cathy comes back in the morning. He curses himself silently and starts walking. Slowly.

He’s still not entirely sure what makes tonight feel like the night to do this. Cathy’s confidence is infectious, maybe; it’s a shame it isn’t more so because right now he wishes he hadn’t started down this particular path at all. 

He could turn around, go back to the house, the kids, tell Cath tomorrow morning that he’d changed his mind, decided it wasn’t worth the risk, it wasn’t worth the loss of a friend, the potential loss of so much more-- 

So, yes, he could turn around right now, go back home, tell Ruth he made a mistake, ta very much, he’ll be back with the kids now...and then go on fighting back the disappointment that swells up every time Cathy pedals off to spend the night with Caroline.

He pauses, steps onto the verge and half-kneels as if to fix a shoelace, and squeezes his eyes shut to try and find that tiny spark of confidence that hadn’t let him sit back with the evening paper, had pushed him in circles around the sitting room until he found himself on the front step. 

He isn’t jealous of Cathy and Caro. He knows that. He had been jealous, briefly, back when Caroline had first introduced him, when he hadn’t known any of them very well, when he’d felt like the outsider being humoured -- or used, even. But that hadn’t been the case; it had just taken him a little while to adjust to a different way of looking at things, himself among them. It’s been all about learning different ways, really, since he met Cathy. 

So it isn’t jealousy, not of the _person._ But Cathy has a whole part of her life -- hours, _days_ at a time -- where she gets to forget about guarding her conversation, watching her pronouns, remembering which story she’s told to whom. If he’s jealous of something, it’s _that._ He doesn’t have that even at home with her, except behind rarely-closed doors -- you can never tell what the kids might pick up and it’s just not worth it for the sake of airing a grievance neither of them can do anything about.

He takes a deep breath, pulls his trouser cuff back down, and stands straight again, walking slowly down the verge of the road, close to the garden fences. He’s aiming for the long way ‘round -- the same way Cathy would have gone earlier in the evening on her bicycle. He can get over the river on the footbridge and cut up along the stream to the vicarage.

Why won’t the thought of Sidney let him alone? It isn’t as though he hasn’t found other men attractive -- he’s not a bloody monk and he’s got eyes in his head. Cathy doesn’t scratch all his itches any more than he does hers. But dismissing the passing thought has always been easy before. What the hell is it about a gawky blond vicar that makes it _impossible_ not to think about him?

And he’s lucky, he knows he is, so stupidly lucky already that on top of everything else, he gets to have Sidney as a friend and sometime colleague. A smart man wouldn’t even _consider_ the chance of risking it. 

So under the circumstances, it’s probably a good thing he’s never thought of himself as being that smart. Stubborn, yes; determined, sometimes. Mostly he just doesn’t like seeing an unfair fight, he’s an opinionated sod, and he can’t keep his mouth shut. As Sidney has pointed out. More than once. Unnecessarily often, in fact. 

Geordie turns from the main road onto the narrow footpath that leads to the bridge. He can see marks of a bicycle wheel in the earth and wonders if it was Cathy’s. She’ll be safely at the flat by now, tucked up with her girls -- and good luck to her. That isn’t what he wants -- or perhaps not the people he wants it with. If it was Sidney on the other end of that bike trip now-- 

He stops in the middle of the bridge and watches the water swirl away for a moment. The sun is just about set, the last gleams of light on the water turning it into opaque amber and he can smell something blooming along the bank although he doesn’t know what it is. 

If it was Sidney on the other end of that bike trip-- The thought sends an entirely unexpected spike of heat through him, curling low in his belly and pulling his muscles momentarily tight. He bites the inside of his lip hard then grips the handrail of the bridge and makes himself think it through. 

If it _was_ \-- a Sidney who _knew_ he was coming, was expecting him, waiting for him, _wanting_ him to be there--- ‘I wouldn’t bloody well be standin’ here, would I,’ he mutters to himself, slaps the handrail, and turns to go on.

The only time he honestly thinks he even came close to something like that was Nicholas Kingsley. King. He really should’ve known better when the man’s nickname was _King._ Looking back on it, it’s painfully obvious -- the man practically had _egotistical bastard_ tattooed on his forehead and Geordie had been the only one who couldn’t see it. He’d been young at the time himself, there’s that in his favor; the rest of it was just him being thick. 

The only thing he can say now in Kingsley’s favor is that he hadn’t dropped Geordie on the spot for some other sweet young thing. No, he’d waited… oh, at least a week before that American from the air base. 

Then Geordie thinks, sometimes, that he had found the best he was going to get with Fred: evening in the pub, a quick fuck afterwards, and nothing to worry about in the morning.

Geordie snorts to himself, shoving his hands in his pockets as he walks. His back catalogue is best described as both brief and humiliating, really. 

Cathy never commented, was always willing to make him a cuppa and hold his hand through yet another disappointment, and Caroline was kind enough to dismiss the whole sad lot as his bad luck. Bad luck isn’t quite how he’d choose to describe it. Of course, he’s never told either of them the whole story of Harold Sterling. That had been a nasty few months. 

Geordie prefers to be honest, at least with himself. He can’t keep up with the kind of man he likes so he takes the ones he can get. Or he used to, anyway; he came to the conclusion not long before the war ended that it wasn’t worth it. Even he’s not thick enough to _enjoy_ being kicked.

It makes him wonder a bit why he’s bothering _now,_ after nearly a decade...except he knows why. And at least this time he can say it’s the pretty face _and_ the encyclopedic knowledge of whiskey -- not to mention the fun of getting Sidney riled up over his music -- and Leonard -- and that daft dog of his -- and too many other things to count. Sidney fights back, stands up to him, doesn’t let him get away with anything -- but not out of a desire to make himself look clever or to make himself feel better at Geordie’s expense. Sidney’s clever, all right, but he’s honest about it; not like Kingsley, always trying to set Geordie up for the fall so he could momentarily feel better about being such a sad sod himself. And, miracle of bloody miracles, Sidney doesn’t take offense when Geordie spits fire back at him.

And… Sidney doesn’t seem like the sort to be after a drink and a grope. Not if Geordie’s reading him right and God only knows he hopes he is. If God is the right place to apply when having dirty thoughts about the vicar.

But if he _is_ right -- he’s going to have some explaining to do, because Sidney also isn’t the sort to just let things slide. No, he’s going to want to know the whys and wherefores and what the hell is Geordie going to tell him? 

He doesn’t know how to explain what he and Cathy and Caro share; he’s never had to before.

Stepping off the end of the footpath into the broader lane that will dead-end by the vicarage and the church, he slows down again. He’ll have to have _some_ kind of explanation -- and what the hell is he going to say to Sidney anyway? ‘You remember what drink I like, you’re the only person who can reliably make me laugh, and I really should not have gone swimming with you’? 

The last is certainly true. If he had a pound note for every time his memory had inconveniently presented him with Sidney as he’s seen him in the garden a few times, shirtless or in a vest, sun-flushed… Well, he’d be a wealthier man than he is right now and adding trunks and river water to the mix had just been the icing on the cake. Regardless of what happens in the next hour or so, _that_ picture’s going to stay with him for awhile. 

Sidney’s going to ask about Cathy. If Geordie doesn’t miss his guess, it’ll be the first question he asks -- and that’s assuming Geordie can come up with some way of getting the bloody conversation started that won’t make Sidney think he needs putting away -- and he tries to imagine a response: “Well, you see, my wife’s girl was the one who introduced us and then Cath wanted to have kids and...” It sounds awful even in his head and he grimaces and shakes the thought away.

Even walking as slowly as he is, it isn’t far from the footbridge to the corner before the vicarage and he’s almost by the garden gate before he realises. The sunlight’s fading fast, leaving that peculiar glow over the landscape that lasts for about half an hour this time of year: everything light looks lighter and everything dark, darker. The white flowers along the garden fence almost seem to be glowing and Geordie pauses.

Sidney’s at the far side of the garden, fussing with part of the hedge. As Geordie watches, Sidney stabs a pair of shears points-down into the earth by his feet and yanks at a long trailer of ivy, pulling it free of the hedge with a huff and dropping it in a messy curl on the grass. Between his hair and shirt, he’s the brightest thing in the garden in this half-light and Geordie feels his hand tighten on the fence paling, an aborted instinct to reach out and touch. 

Part of him wants very much to turn around and disappear back into the darkness gathering in the lane -- go back and tell Ruth he’d had a nice walk, isn’t it a lovely evening, and he’s back with the kids now. 

Sidney’s whistling to himself, the tune breaking off every now and then as he wrestles with another tendril of ivy. Geordie feels he should know the tune but he can’t put a name to it -- something Sidney’s made him listen to, he’s sure. Sidney finally holds the last bit of ivy stretched out at arms-length and cuts the end with the shears, letting it curl back along his arm. It almost looks a little silly: like a kid playing with a bit of rope or a hoop. He gathers up the tendrils on the grass, tucks the shears under his other arm, and turns towards the back of the garden.

So, yes, Geordie thinks, carefully loosing his grip from the paling and shaking his hand. Yes, he could turn around and go back home; Cathy wouldn’t ask if he didn’t offer, and the whole thing could just slide into the past as one more piece of bad judgment on his part. 

From where he’s standing, he can still hear Sidney whistling, louder now that he isn’t distracted with the hedge, breaking off every now and then to sing a phrase or two over to himself. He goes out of sight with the armful of ivy, then comes back with just the shears in hand and disappears into the shed. Geordie can hear the sound of a whetstone, then there are a few moments of silence, and Sidney reappears. For a minute, Geordie thinks he’s going to turn back to the house, whatever tasks he’d had in mind for himself accomplished, but instead he stands at the door of the shed, looking out over the garden. Geordie can hear him humming, then he stops and shakes his head, leaning one shoulder against the doorframe.

Sidney’s the brightest thing in the garden even as the last half-hour of light fades away. Geordie still wants to reach out and touch and, in the end, that’s what pushes him forward through the gate.

**Author's Note:**

> A thousand blessings on [Elizajane](http://archiveofourown.org/users/elizajane) and [Kivrin](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Kivrin).
> 
> The title is a [Thomas Carlyle quote](http://www.bartleby.com/100/249.92.html) about Samuel Johnson talking about James Boswell. Beat _that_.


End file.
